The present invention is directed to an electronic vorsetzer pedal foot for converting a conventional piano to an electronic player piano. In the past, a typical vorsetzer was a unit which rested upon the keyboard or some other structure of a conventional piano and actuated the piano keys in accordance with and under the control of a conventional player piano roll. Such units were typically mechanical, pneumatic, and/or electromechanical units which had striker elements which, under control of a perforated piano roll, struck or depressed the piano keys to play the tune. With the advent of the electronic player piano units which, instead of using the conventional punched hole player piano roll, use magnetic tape preferably and typically in the form of magnetic tape cassettes. As disclosed in Vincent U.S. Pat. No. 3,905,267, Englund U.S. Pat. No. 3,604,299, and the above-identified related applications, as well as other related applications of the assignee hereof, the parallel format of the electronic player piano roll, converted to a serial format for the storage of the musical data on the magnetic tape and in time division multiplex frames of data is used to provide control signals to the solenoids of an electromagnetically operated player piano. Other forms of storage of the data may be used in accordance with the present invention, it not being limited to the type of storage of information, even being applicable to conventional solenoid or electromagnetically operated player piano systems.
In the past, there has been difficulty in securing the pedals to the vorsetzer assembly per se so that the vorsetzer itself can be easily, but not permanently, positioned in alignment with the keyboard and connection of the pedals thereto. Frequently, an internal connection is made to the piano pedals by means of an internal linkage.
An object and feature of the present invention is that it requires no modification of the conventional piano keyboard nor does it require any structural modifications of the pedal assembly. In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the sustain and soft pedals of a typical piano are engaged by a novel mechanical foot structure which engages the pedal lever assembly in such a way that it slips on and off easily. In this way, the pedals themselves may be easily captured or engaged with the unit in such a manner that the actuating force, e.g., from the solenoid assembly (to be more fully described hereafter), pushes downward on the rear portion of the foot causing a slight upward force (from the rotational effect) on a further portion of the mechanical foot which, preferably, is padded, which portion contacts the lower side of the pedal, thereby allowing the pedal to be moved downward and upward without the mechanical foot slipping off. Moreover, by providing a pair of universal joints, one at the vorsetzer per se and one at the foot, a large range of various angles of force application to the piano pedals can be accommodated so precise alignment is not required. Moreover, the pedal actuator assembly is set up on the piano in a spring preloaded condition which aids the pedal actuating solenoid by offsetting the pedal spring already existing in the piano.
As indicated above, in a preferred embodiment of the invention, the mechanical foot is driven by a solenoid which is mounted in the vorsetzer unit itself. A spring in the vorsetzer itself biases the solenoid actuated lever in the direction of actuation and against the spring that is in the pedals. A damper device such as a dashpot is connected to the solenoid actuated lever for impeding the rapid movement of the lever. This avoids the highly undesirable boxy sounding effect as if a human player tromped hard or thumped his foot on the loud and/or sustain pedals and more closely approximates the action of the human foot in playing the soft and sustain pedals of the piano.